In recent years, all over the world, cats have become the most popular indoor pets.
Unlike the dog, which needs to go outside several times a day to do its physiological needs, the cat can stay indoors permanently, utilizing the litter box as a toilet. For this reason, litter boxes have become a common feature in many homes, in many countries.
Throughout the years several litter boxes have been invented, from the simplest to the so called “advanced”. The simplest ones require manual excrement removal, by digging in the litter to look for these. The simple, but advanced, do not require manual excavation of the excrements, however they are not automated. In the so called “advanced”, the process is automated and requires little from the human.
These inventions, however, do not solve the several problems pet owners face, like regular sanitation of the litter tray, the litter spread around the litter box area and the manual excavation for excrements, they are limited to solving one or two problems per invention.
For instance U.S. Pat. No. 4,120,264A, is limited to removing the excrements without direct manual process, however it does not solve the problem of the litter that falls from the animal's paws to the surrounding environment after it uses the litter box.
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,662,066, US20140245960 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,463,881, also do not solve the problem of the litter that gets stuck in the animal's paws and spreads to the surrounding environment. They are basically limited to solving the problem of direct manual removal of the excrements, in an automatic and automated way.
Other solutions have been developed, for instance patent WO2013160899, which solves two problems, easy removal of the excrements, without direct intervention and the litter that attaches to the animal's paws. It is not, however, practical when it comes to the regular sanitation necessary to a litter box, due to the residues of animal urine that tend to lodge in the bottom of the tray of the litter box. In order to sanitize the box it is necessary to remove the litter from the system to another location and to move the entire system to the washing place.
Throughout the new inventions, the sanitation of the litter box tray has been one of the forgotten factors, concerning hygiene matters, which is, possibly, one of the biggest problems a pet owner has to deal with.
Concerning the animal's urine, it tends to lodge in the bottom of the litter tray. No matter how much litter you add to the tray, the animal tends to excavate leaving the excrements always near the bottom of the litter tray. It is practically inevitable that this happens and when it happens constantly, the granular matter (“cat litter”) tends to get stuck to the bottom of the tray.
In systems where the removal of the animal's excrements is done manually and directly, pet owners usually move the litter to one side of the tray and scrape the paste, resultant of the contact of the urine with the granular matter and the bottom of the tray, with a scoop, throw it away and re-cover with litter without washing first.
In other systems, as the ones mentioned earlier, especially the automated ones, where interior access is limited, the paste is not even scraped, clean litter is placed on top, which, in matters of hygiene, is far from desired.
Having into account these considerations, it is highly relevant the creation of a litter box where manual excavation for excrement removal is not necessary, that avoids or diminishes the litter attached to the animal's paws, which culminates in a better cleanliness of the surrounding environment and possesses a removable litter tray, with or without litter, in order to facilitate regular sanitation, without litter to make washing the removable litter tray easier, and with litter to make the rest of the system easier to wash without the need to move it to another location.
The patent application US005107797A discloses a removable drawer (60), but this cited removable drawer (60) does not solve the technical problem in an easy and expeditious manner as claimed in the present invention.
The cited patent application US005107797A as referred in line 66 of the page 2 “The rotatable enclosure 5 is filled to an appropriate depth with litter material, which can rest either upon the inner surface of the enclosure 5, or upon a removable drawer 60 (see FIGS. 9-14) which itself rests upon the inner surface of the enclosure 5”.
The above mention removable drawer 60, which is only mentioned in the brief description of the drawings and in the cited paragraph of the description, is only shown in FIG. 10 (see FIG. 14) separately from the rotatable enclosure 5 and the removable drawer 60 is not shown in any of FIGS. 1, 3, 4, 5 and 8 that shown the rotatable enclosure 5.
In any FIGS. 1, 3, 4, 5 and 8 the removable drawer 60 is never represented inside of the rotational housing 5.
But in anyway if this removable drawer 60 is located inside of the housing 5 in the region of the litter 35 shown with a dashed line, FIGS. 3, 4 and 5 (see FIGS. 3-5), it does not solve the technical problem that the present invention is solved, because the supports 17, 18 (which are between the cylinder 5 and the housing 2) and also end 3 of the housing 2, block the removable drawer 60 to come out from the inside of the housing 5 in a horizontal and slid able manner. So the removable drawer 60 couldn't come out from the inside of the housing 5 in an easy and expeditious manner as claimed in the present invention.